Playboy's cell phone centerfolds

Playboy's cell phone centerfolds

Giving new meaning to the term “phone sex,” Playboy Enterprises Inc. announced that it will be distributing adult-oriented content via wireless phones throughout the U.S.



Working with Dwango Wireless, a mobile-phone content developer, Playboy plans to make content available on-demand to 170 million North American wireless subscribers. Cell phone users will have access to Playboy-themed games, images, video clips, voice clips and ring tones as soon as “early 2005,” according to the company.



In addition to the North American market, Playboy currently offers mobile phone content in 17 other countries, including Germany and Brazil.

A recent study by the Yankee Group, a Boston-based communications research firm, predicted that mobile porn will be a $1 billion global market by 2008. Of that, $90 million will be in the U.S., a figure that would constitute just 2 percent of US spending on adult content in all media.



The idea of viewing porn on a pixilated 2-square-inch screen may seem like an odd concept, but cell phone users already get various kinds of pictorial and digital content on their phones, including TV-style news clips.



“It’s probably too early to tell how this will play,” says entertainment industry analyst Dennis McAlpine of McAlpine Associates. “There isn’t a big market for it yet, but it says that Playboy wants to be there when the demand comes.” That stands in contrast, Mr. McAlpine says, to video-on-demand. “That snuck up on them,” he says. “I don’t’ think they saw that developing.”



Terms of Playboy’s alliance with Seattle-based Dwango were not released.

This will work a lot better when the content is delivered directly to your retina and it is impossible for anyone to look over your shoulder and freeload your subscription.



Thanks to J.